44. 44
She leaves soon after, heading to the airport.
I shouldn’t have said that. She’s everything—despite the money, regardless of where she came from or where she’s going. I admire her. I respect her—
I don’t respect her for running away. I’m pissed and I want to shout at her, to bust through her walls, but I know that won’t work.
I’m not sure what will work with Cady, but I tried. I tried to talk to her, to make her see what she was doing.
Doing to us.
Cady is running away, putting up walls because that’s what she’s always done. And no one has ever fought for her before.
But she still walks away from me. She doesn’t take the time to shower, and I know she still smells of me.
I was cruel, she was nasty.
She told my father I was a good man after she thought I brought her with me to take her out of the running for the island.
Who does that?
Cady.
Cady does all these nice things and I…
I’m falling in love with her.
I slump by the door after she leaves, head in hands, feeling like I’ve been run over by a bus. It’s a far cry from how happy and carefree I felt waking up beside her.
“Dude?” I look up to see Dexter with a concerned expression. He’s holding the dress I bought. The one I couldn’t wait to get her out of. “What’s going on?” He looks pointedly at the door.
“Cady left,” I tell him hollowly. “She went to the airport. I guess there’s a flight leaving in a couple of hours. She got a seat on that.”
“Ah.” Dexter frowns. “Did she have a good reason not to wait for the private jet to fly her home?”
“I’m honestly not sure. I don’t really know what happened.”
“I heard some shouting,” he offers. “Nick is still out cold.”
“Yeah, that was… She thinks I betrayed her,” I confess. “She thinks I told my father about one of her business deals. It’s a long story; we’re both trying to buy the same property.”
“That doesn’t seem too long a story.” Dexter disappears into the kitchen and I smell the welcome aroma of coffee. Heaving a sigh, I follow him, hoping a jolt of caffeine will make me feel human again. “Does she know how things are with your father?”
I nod as I accept the mug. “She thinks I’m sucking up.”
“Are you? I mean, did you say something to him?”
I rub the back of my neck. “Sort of, I guess. I mean—he already knew. He texted me yesterday, told me to come back because there was another offer in play. He didn’t know it was Cady, though. It’s under her company name. It wouldn’t have taken him long to figure out.”
“So you told him.”
There’s no accusation in Dexter’s voice, just understanding. We’ve been friends too long for him to know not to bother to berate me, knows I’m doing enough to myself. He’s a teacher—a professor—and always tells me he understands nothing about my business, but he understands about my father.
“I told him Cady was behind it,” I admit.
“And he knew she was down here with you?”
I nod. “He sent a bunch of texts, but I didn’t read them until this morning. And Cady saw them first. She read all the horrible things my father said about her, and thought I told him everything about what she’s working for, and she still ripped him a new one. Said all these things about me being a better man than he was.”
“Well, you are. That was decent of her.”
“She was really upset.”
“If you were a dick to me, I’d be upset, too. But I’d get over it, with a little time. A little space.”
“Guys forgive each other a lot quicker than women do,” I point out.
Avery long six hours later, my father meets me at the airport as I walk across the tarmac. As my latest text thread tells me, he’s arranged another plane to take us to Muskoka, a smaller one so we can land right on the landing strip on the island. He wants the deal done today, and he hopes I better not have screwed things up.
Caroline is with him, standing off to the side, clearly uptight about being there.
Seeing them together is part of my punishment. Not that I need any more. I spent the four-hour flight trying to figure out how to get Cady to talk to me, some grand gesture she can’t ignore.
I watched Pretty Woman on the plane—I know the movie resonates with Cady. In the end, Edward came to find Vivian, climbing up the fire escape when she knew he was afraid of heights. He thought he was rescuing her, but the reality was she made him a better person. They rescued each other. They became each other’s person.
I thought we could be each other’s person. How could it have gotten so wrong, so fast?
I need something that I’m afraid of. I need to rescue her, but not rescue her.
I need to show up in a big way and hope she meets me halfway.
“I’m not going with you,” I announce, cutting off the beginning of his tirade about how I could be such a—whatever he thinks of me at that moment.
“What’s the matter, hungover from too much partying?” My father sneers. “Too much fucking that whore you took with you?”
Caroline flinches, either from the language or the idea of me having sex. I don’t care. “She’s not a whore.”
“You’re blind. And an idiot.” My father is still a good-looking man, but the ugliness of his soul comes out when he speaks to me like that. “But I’ve known that for a while. Let’s go—you can give me details of her offer on the plane.”
“I’m not telling you anything, and I’m not getting into a plane with you.” It’s easier than I thought to keep my voice firm, to stand up straight and tall in front of him. “I’m done with you.”
“Bullshit,” he spits. “You need every handout you can get. You can’t make it on your own, boy.”
“Just watch me.” I back away, head held high. “Cady did tell me one thing that you might find interesting,” I say to Caroline.
“Maximus.” It’s a low growl, like the first ripples of an earthquake.
She only shakes her head, like she knows what I’m about to tell her. “Why don’t you ask him about his account with E? You’ve heard of that dating app, haven’t you?” Caroline’s eyes are huge. “I don’t know the details, nor do I want to, but you should check out if he gets off being spanked or likes to deride his partners into submission. I’m sure that’s obvious, though.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dalton Steele shouts.
I shrug, slinging my bag over my shoulder. “I know I’m done with standing here letting you destroy another one of my relationships. I’m off to fight for Cady—the woman I love.” I turn to Caroline. “For once, I’m glad I never fought for you because I’d be stuck right there beside you.”
And then I walk away.